Reagan’s Withdrawal From Lebanon and Hard-liners’ Misreading of History

Sending Marines to Lebanon for such an imprecise and unachievable end-state was a tremendous mistake. Reagan’s decision to tacitly admit that it was a U.S. foreign-policy failure, and to then undertake corrective actions, was an admirable trait rarely seen in poilcymakers or presidents.

As I discussed in my article on Reagan last year, the Lebanon intervention is one of the most disputed and most frequently invoked episodes from his presidency on the right:

The original decision to intervene in Lebanon stands as a warning for conservative noninterventionists that there is nothing to be gained for the U.S. by becoming involved in conflicts in countries whose history and internal divisions Americans don’t even begin to understand. Indeed, withdrawing U.S. forces from Lebanon had no significant harmful consequences for U.S. security. It was only much later, following the 9/11 attacks, that hawks put a new, implausible spin on the decision to leave Lebanon as an invitation to future strikes against us.

Even though it seems very clear to many Americans today that the Lebanon intervention was a textbook case of a futile, dangerous, and unnecessary deployment of American soldiers in the middle of a foreign conflict, hard-liners continue to believe that Reagan’s great blunder in Lebanon was in withdrawing rather than in the original intervention. It makes no difference that they can’t identify any negative consequences for the decision until almost twenty years after the fact, and then only by relying on a tendentious reading of jihadist propaganda. We see the same illogical complaint over and over again in the last three debates: the only presidential error hard-liners can recognize is when presidents choose to end a military mission. Hard-liners faulted the elder Bush for not going on to Baghdad, they blamed Clinton for leaving Somalia after the debacle in Mogadishu, they have lambasted Obama for not keeping American forces in Iraq, and they are gearing up to do the same in the event that all U.S. forces leave Afghanistan. The only time that such people are reluctant to trust presidential judgment is when a president is in the process of getting American soldiers out of harm’s way. If this requires distorting the historical record, that is what they will do.

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7 Responses to Reagan’s Withdrawal From Lebanon and Hard-liners’ Misreading of History

My memory of the Lebanon intervention is that it came undone when the stronger of the Gamiel (sp?) brothers was assassinated. This deprived us of a strong leader to work with. I assumed at the time that the Christians were still a strong enough force to revive their fortunes. Perhaps that possibility had already passed.

It’s noteworthy that we shed blood and treasure to maintain the Jewish state in the Middle East but we have no such commitment to Lebanon’s Christians. Lebanon was created by the French as a haven for Christians. Eisenhower was willing to intervene in 1958 and perhaps President Reagan had some hopes along those lines. My impression is that there are too few Christian Lebanese to control Lebanon any longer. They should have spent more on lobbying.

“It makes no difference that they can’t identify any negative consequences for the decision until almost twenty years after the fact, and then only by relying on a tendentious reading of jihadist propaganda.”

One thing that strikes me right off, is how these are the same people who would staunchly deny that our backing of the Shah of Iran in 1953 had anything to do with the ‘Islamic Revolution’ that occurred 25 later. And as far as their reading of jihadist propaganda is concerned, it is not only “tendentious,” but highly selective. Even if the US pull-out from Lebanon marginally influenced their decision to attack the US, how many Neocons stand ready to ignore statements publicly released by Al-Qaeda indicating that their ‘jihad’ against us was motivated even more by serial interventions in the ME, and by our backing of Israel against the Palestinians?

As I’ve said before, insider details on the Reagan administration paint a picture of an out to lunch senior citizen whose staff ran the show. While James Baker is not a stupid man, I suspect his ego was a bit too much to resist getting the President to “intervene” in Lebannon.

“… insider details on the Reagan administration paint a picture of an out to lunch senior citizen…”

But Puller, in the first place doesn’t the history of Presidents show that to be a great one you should follow the advice of both Truman and Eisenhower that you should pick your one or two or at most three “big” issues to try to resolve and concentrate on those? And leave the “small-ball” to others? That … no one human can realistically hope to do more successfully than that? And that in that vein Reagan was anything but “out to lunch? The Soviets, the economy … Not many Presidents at *all* with that kind of record.

And then as regards Lebanon, I think you miss Larison’s great point: The *real* big lessons from same lie in Reagan’s recognition of his mistake and his open and decisive volte face concerning same, and the lack of political and policy danger in doing so.

Just think of how bloody unusual that is for our “leaders,” who seem to feel that for the sake of not admitting any mistake will continue to expend any number of additional trillions or American deaths so as to claim that things are working no matter even how absolutely *farcical* the case: Think of … Afghanistan, for instance, right now. Hell, you can even *feel* Obama knowing it’s all still a waste, and yet…

The conduct of policy is a *process,* and what would anyone say about a process that holds that one never admits mistakes and cuts one’s losses?

Yet that’s exactly what we’ve got ourselves into now, and exactly what Reagan proved is stupid. He *knew* that by withdrawing from Lebanon that he’d be accused of wasting all those Marines’ lives in that attack. But he also knew when he made a mistake and was more concerned about rectifying same than suffering the political damage by continuing. And then it further turned out that this *didn’t* fatally harm him. That he *hadn’t* regarded the American people as fools so that they *would* forgive him his mistake so long as he didn’t continue it.

Nor, as Larison notes, was his withdrawal any big mistake in terms of inciting more terrorism against us.

In short after making his blunder—and what President *doesn’t* make them?—Reagan did everything right, and it turned out to not just be politically right but “policy” right as well.

This then is why the neo-cons and hard-liners feel they have to address the Lebanon experience: Because it endangers their fundamental call for us to now double-down on our Bush follies and our Mideast policies with all their wastes and costs and damages.

Follow Reagan, and we’d get out out out. Follow them, and hello more quagmire.

I agree with your discussion, but would add a point. The reason I believe neocons don’t trust a president to leave a country is that to them anything less than total victory is defeat, and undercuts the neocon assumption of American power and omnipotence. Rather than undercut this assumption they will resort to all sorts of rationalization and distortions, not out of dishonesty but because of very human desires to avoid “being wrong”. I believe that this inability to do an honest and dispassionate self-examination of the facts and of their reasoning is the biggest root cause of why we still have a lot of war-mongers out there, even when it becomes obvious to most of us that many of these causes are not worth American blood or money.